328 The Hunting PVasps 



Rassade of the South ; he has thought-out the 

 recipe of a fry of Locusts, I am astounded at 

 the impossible stews which he has concocted 

 during his cosmopohtan career. 



I am no less surprised at his penetrating eye 

 and his memory for things. I have only to 

 describe some plant, which to him is but a 

 nameless weed, devoid of the least interest ; and, 

 if it grows in our woods, I feel pretty sure that 

 he will bring it to me and tell me the spot where 

 I can pick it for myself. The botany of the 

 infinitesimal even does not foil his perspicacity. 

 To complete my already-published work on the 

 Sphaeriaceae of Vaucluse, I resume my patient 

 herborizing with the lens during the bad 

 weather, the insect's slack time. When the 

 frost hardens the ground, when the rains reduce 

 it to slush, I take Favier away from his work 

 in the garden to scour the woods with me ; 

 and there, in the tangle of some bramble-bush, 

 we hunt together for those microscopic growths 

 which speckle with black dots the tiny branches 

 strewn all over the soil. He calls the largest 

 species ' gimpowder,' an accurate expression 

 which has already been used by the botanists 

 to describe one of those Sphaeriaceae. He feels 

 quite proud of his bunch of discoveries, which 

 is richer than mine. When he lights upon a 

 magnificent rosellinia, a mass of black pustules 



